The present invention is directed toward feeders and, more particularly, toward feeders for supplying plate-like objects to a work area.
Plate feeders for continuously supplying plates to machines, or for continuously moving plates between different processes are known. Examples of such plate feeders are shown in U.S. Pat. No. 2,942,392 to McCain et al., U.S. Pat. No. 3,160,996 to Dunn and U.S. Pat. No. 3,195,740 to Lange et al. Such plate feeders are not suitable for supplying plates to a work area (such as on an assembly line) where the fed plates are manually worked on and/or manually installed into a device by an on-line technician. In such a situation, the on-line technician does not need the plates to be continually supplied to him/her, but rather needs the plates to be supplied to him/her on an as-needed basis.
Conventionally, the on-line technician is supplied with stacks of plates from which individual plates must be removed to be worked on and/or installed. In many applications, such as on an automotive assembly line, the plates are covered with oil and are difficult to separate from a stack. Accordingly, offline technicians often separate the plates and restack them in alternating positions to facilitate their removal from the stack by the online technician. As can be appreciated, this separating and restacking operation is tedious and time consuming.
Based on the foregoing, there exists a need in the art for a plate feeder that can supply plates to an online technician on an as-needed basis. The present invention is directed to such a plate feeder and to a method of feeding plates.